Red is the Rose
by grumkinsnark
Summary: He's being shipped out again and she's still trapped in a marriage she wants no part of.


"Must you leave?" His arm is tight around her, his body warm, yet still her chill remains. It's been the same for months now as the precious days have dwindled one after the other; she can't stop the cold, every bit of her on edge. "Can't you stay?"

"You know I don't have a choice." He doesn't look at her. "You knew that when we…"

He trails off, reluctant as ever to give a name to whatever _this_ is. So is she, truth be told. _Affair_ sounds so crass, old men soliciting prostitutes and paying for a fleabag motel room in cash. Yet _fling_ is too flippant and _relationship_ isn't quite it either, not with her husband still in the picture. Which he very much is, even if he's the last thing she's ever wanted.

Except what else can she do? Divorce would make her a pariah in this place—assuming he even allowed it—she has no money or property of her own, and with her recurring health problems the way that they are, making an honest living by herself would be a monstrous hurdle. She hasn't borne him any children yet, thank heaven, or else she'd surely lose them, too.

Her only saving grace is that he trusts her, would never guess she'd be anything but prim and proper. He believes beyond a shadow of a doubt that her days are all spent volunteering at the hospital; they are, but with the abundance of fellow nurses, her hours have been fewer. With the extra time, she…well.

She'd tried, really she had. Arthur was just another casualty of the Germans in the beginning, another nameless wounded soldier whose doctors projected he'd never fully recover. All she'd been to him was a nurse, nothing more. Then he _had_ gotten better, his ashen skin had returned to brown, his smile had made her feel like a silly schoolgirl. When he'd begun to walk again on his own, it'd only been two or three steps, hardly a blip on the doctors' radar, but in their joint excitement, he'd kissed her full on the mouth. It was like taking the first breath of air after nearly drowning, and from that moment on, giving him up was simply not an option.

"You've already been injured once," she pleads, thinking all too clearly of the night they'd brought him in. "How can they just send you right back out again?"

"I belong to them," he says bitterly. "They need men at the front. So long as I can command a company and kill a man from five hundred yards, they'll put me wherever they damn well please."

"We only have a _day_." Less than that. Dusk would soon be upon them, and shortly after sunrise he would board a train to be shipped off overseas. She wouldn't see him again for who even knows how long. Maybe never. "I can't just go on pretending everything's fine. I can't just pretend it doesn't matter to me that you could be killed at any moment."

"Yes, you can. You can do anything, Elia."

"Arthur—"

"I'll come back. How could I not?" He kisses her, so deeply her chill almost disappears entirely, and when he breaks it there's a wild sort of determination in his dark eyes she hasn't seen before. "When I do, I don't care what it takes, I'm going to marry you. I want you. I love you."

He's said it more times than she can count, but the words never fail to make her stomach flip. "And I you. Always."

"Good," he says. "Because I have something for you."

He draws away in order to rummage through his jacket that was carelessly discarded earlier, and when he rejoins her, he has a ring held between his fingers. It's everything her extravagant wedding set isn't, just a simple band of gold plate, but she can't think of anything more lovely. He slides it onto her right hand, unremarkable to anyone but them.

"I don't have one for you," she says, brushing her thumb over the spot where one might rest.

"I have you, that's enough."

She glances at the clock on the wall and smiles. "You haven't had me in a whole hour." She runs her hand up his thigh, his muscles there marred only by the thick, jagged scar marking the wound that had nearly taken his leg. "I should change that."

Change it she does, and as she loses herself in joy, she maps every inch of him, cementing him to memory. She doesn't know how long this war would last, no one does, and she never wants to lose his image, the feel of him inside her.

She accompanies him to the station too, even though there could be people there who know her husband, who could betray this secret. But she doesn't care anymore, she just doesn't care. She kisses him in front of them all, halfway between wanting to lead him into the coatroom to have him once more and wanting to convince him to run away with her. Away from the army, away from Rhaegar, away from all of this.

But then the train whistle blows, and time is no longer theirs to have.


End file.
